Business Ready Security at WPC 2009

This week in New Orleans, Microsoft is hosting the annual Worldwide Partner Conference where Microsoft made several identity and security announcements as part of their Business Ready Security strategy including the following:

oForefront codename “Stirling” – the next generation of the Forefront Security Suite will be officially known as Forefront Protection Suite (FPS). FPS will include the products in the current suite, plus the Forefront Protection Manager (formerly known as the “Stirling” management console) and the Forefront Threat Management Gateway Web Security Service.

oFPS pricing will remain the same as the current Forefront Security Suite and all of the component solutions will continue to be licensed on a subscription basis. They will also be available independently, with Forefront Protection Manager included. (Note that the Forefront Threat Management Gateway license is sold separately on a per processor basis.) The new FPS solutions are currently in beta and final versions will ship over the course of the latter half of 2009 and the first half of 2010.

oMicrosoft also announced thatForefront Unified Access Gateway beta 2 is available for download at www.microsoft.com/forefront. UAG provides secure, virtually anywhere access to messaging, collaboration and other applications, increasing productivity and policy compliance. UAG also extends the benefits of Windows DirectAccess across the enterprise, enhancing scalability, deployment and management.

At WPC Microsoft also announced the following new product solution names: